A California raw milk producer has been tapped by President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet to advise the Food and Drug Administration.
Mark McAfee, CEO of the Fresno-based company Raw Farm, confirmed to the Washington Examiner that he has complied with the request from Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s nominee for Health and Human Services secretary, to advise the FDA on the Raw Milk Standards and Policy for Human Consumption panel.
McAfee said he has since spoken with the transition team several times, but no final decisions have been made.
Raw milk, which has not undergone the heat treatment process of pasteurization to kill harmful bacteria, is a top concern in Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda, partly because of its hotly debated health benefits and risks for spreading disease.
Pasteurization has been mandatory in the United States since 1924 to eliminate dangerous bacteria such as E. coli, campylobacter, and salmonella. According to the FDA, milk was responsible for 25% of all illnesses caused by food and water contamination in 1938.
However, advocates of raw milk suggest the close relationships between industrialized food producers and the FDA suppress the medical benefits of raw milk, such as decreasing allergies, asthma, eczema, and respiratory infections.
In a previous interview, McAfee said he believes the pasteurization process disincentivizes milk producers from maintaining clean conditions in their production facilities. If milk producers were paid more, he said, they would not need pasteurization to kill harmful bacteria.
“They’re being paid so little for their milk that the standards under the Pasteurized Milk Ordinance and FDA allow anything to get in because it’s going to get pasteurized,” McAfee told the Washington Examiner in May of industrialized farms.
McAfee has over 25 years of experience producing raw milk in California after he took over his family farm in 1990. He also confirmed to the Washington Examiner that Kennedy is “definitely a customer” of his in Los Angeles, where it is legal to sell raw milk in grocery stores but not transport products across state lines.
Transportation of raw milk across state lines is strictly prohibited, but it is allowed to be sold in grocery stores in 12 states. Direct farm-to-customer sales are allowed in 20 states.
“With RFK being appointed to head the HHS (over the NIH, CDC and FDA), it is certain that decades old FDA anti-raw-milk policies will shift soon,” McAfee said in a Saturday press statement. “Raw Farm is the largest producer of raw milk in the world and stands at the battlefront of this transitional event.”
Kennedy has long advocated decoupling corporate interests from the public health sector in food consumption and pharmaceuticals. Although he was associated with the liberal left for many years, he has brought his brand of skepticism of the public health establishment to the fore of the GOP agenda.
McAfee told the Washington Examiner that Kennedy “wants all Americans to have that same choice in access to legal safe, tested high-quality raw milk.”
However, recently, McAfee has been involved in at least 11 lawsuits related to a salmonella outbreak that sickened at least 171 people between October 2023 and May 2024.
Raw Farm has also been the subject of much scrutiny from California public health officials in the context of the H5N1, or bird flu, outbreak among dairy cattle. Particles of the virus have been found in raw milk and have been deemed unsafe for human consumption, as fears of bird flu mutating to more easily infect humans continue to loom.
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McAfee has highlighted that, so far, there have been no reported human infections of bird flu related to the consumption of raw milk containing the H5N1 virus. He also said all Raw Farm cows “are asymptomatic and show no signs” of infection.
“Raw Farm has a brain trust of the world’s best H5N1 scientists on our team,” McAfee said in the press release.